How the Browns Got Back in the Deshaun Watson Chase
Deshaun Watson eliminated the Browns on Wednesday night, and the Panthers on Thursday, and back and forth he went Thursday night and Friday morning over whether he should go to his hometown Falcons or a Saints team that had been in the playoffs the last five years in a row and remained loaded for bear.
After a year away from the NFL, he wanted a familiar place that might make his reentry into the sport smoother, according to a source close to the quarterback. He loved the idea of playing in Atlanta in particular, and the South in general, and the thought of being around the people who cheered for him as he grew up. And yet, there was something else he realized, with the two options in front of him, he wanted more.
He wanted to win Super Bowls. And after spending a full season on the sidelines, as much as he liked the long-term plans of every team he met with, he didn’t want to wait to get to work on all of those things.
The best place for that? A place he’d eliminated—because it was far from home, and because he’d only actually been to Cleveland once, for a rain-soaked, wind-swept, 10–7 Texans loss to the Browns in November 2020. So he instructed his agent, David Mulugheta, to call Browns GM Andrew Berry back. That was midday Friday, and by sundown Watson would be Ohio-bound.
This, of course, isn’t an easy story to write about or discuss, and it shouldn’t be. The allegations against Watson are serious and, even with the grand jury in Texas having decided not to move forward with criminal charges on the nine cases it examined, 22 civil cases of sexual misconduct remain. There are, of course, two reasons why teams put the level of resources into vetting Watson they did over the last year. One is what sort of player he is. The other is how significant the case against him was.
I don’t know where the 22 civil suits go from here. But a number of teams that sunk seven figures into preparing for the mere possibility they’d trade for Watson were standing at the finish line last week with him. And we’re about to take you through how he crossed it with the Browns.
Troy Taormina/USA TODAY Sports (Watson); Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports (Miller); Jayne Kamin-Oncea/USA TODAY Sports (Staley)
It’s been a wild week in the NFL, and so we’ve got a lot to take you through. Inside this week’s MMQB, you’ll find …
• How the Josh Allen effect has made Buffalo a destination.
• The message Brandon Staley hopes his Chargers are taking.
• Details on the mid-March splurge in Las Vegas.
• Reasoning on the calls made by Carson Wentz and Mitch Trubisky.
And a whole lot more. But we’re starting with the NFL’s biggest story of the last year, and how one piece reached a conclusion, while another remains unfinished.
The first thing you need to know about how this went down is, after very little movement over a year, things started to move very fast following the grand-jury ruling.
Watson’s camp started with a list of 13 teams that he and his team, through their research, believed would have an interest once the legal situation gained clarity. Ahead of the grand-jury decision, the embattled quarterback had cut the list down to eight teams that he’d consider going to.
And that’s really where the process of offloading Watson began for the Texans, some 14 months after the quarterback’s initial trade request, and a little less than a year since the first lawsuit against him was filed, and where Watson’s search for a new home would accelerate.
• The Texans opened discussions on trade packages with the teams Watson said he’d consider waiving his no-trade clause to go to, but they didn’t have turnkey deals in place with each of them. Instead, GM Nick Caserio established a threshold of three first-rounders with additional considerations—and teams would need to cross that threshold to get permission to talk to Watson from Houston. The idea was simply to save the Texans and the other teams the time of going down the road with Watson if a deal wasn’t feasible.
Three teams failed to clear the threshold or withdrew interest, and the Colts were eliminated because, with other viable options, the Texans weren’t trading Watson in-division. From there, Caserio granted the Saints, Falcons, Panthers and Browns permission to meet with Watson.
• Watson’s camp set up meetings with the Saints and Falcons for Monday, and the Browns for Tuesday at the office of Watson’s attorney, Rusty Hardin, in Houston—Hardin offered the space because the player and teams simply needed a private, secure place to talk. With plans to work out in Atlanta with his quarterback trainer, Quincy Avery, set for later in the week, the Falcons’ meeting was arranged for Wednesday in Georgia.
Each team brought its general manager and head coach, and three of the four had their owners at the initial meetings, too. Saints owner Gayle Benson was the one who didn’t make it to the first set of meetings, and as New Orleans progressed as a serious contender for Watson, the Saints and Watson’s camp arranged a second meeting for Wednesday night in Atlanta, after the Falcons meeting, so the owner could meet the quarterback.
• The Browns, according to a source close, intrigued Watson from the start. He liked the roster that Berry had built, and that Berry was young, and would be around a while, appealed to him. When he talked X’s and O’s with coach Kevin Stefanski, Stefanski told Watson what he liked about his game, a detailed plan for how he’d use him in his offense and also where he thought Watson needed to improve as a player. He also liked how Jimmy and Dee Haslam knew the roster. They knew every player, how each contributed to the team, their contracts, age, and how they projected out into the future.
• Still, at that point, Watson was uneasy about going north to Cleveland, and casting his lot in a cold-weather city after playing high school football in Georgia, college football in South Carolina and pro football in Texas. So on Wednesday, Watson personally called Berry and explained to him why he was eliminating the Browns. Berry wished Watson well, and then called Mulugheta and told him he’d stay in touch and that he’d still be interested if Watson, for some reason, changed his mind.
• According to a Browns source, by then, they had done a lot of the work in vetting Watson, and really ramped up their background research in January as their season ended. They had their security people and their lawyers on it, and also deployed private investigators to dig into the cases against Watson, and also his past, going back to his time in high school and college. They were among the teams that had gone through the depositions of the 22 women alleging sexual misconduct by Watson, as well, though lawyer Tony Buzbee told ESPN on Sunday that none of the teams involved contacted him or the women directly.
• The Panthers were eliminated Thursday night, which put Watson at the end of his process, hoping to decide between the Falcons (who had geography going for them) and the Saints (who had the aforementioned recent on-field success on their side).
And that’s where the Browns got back into it.
So yes, Watson, according to a source, liked his interactions with the Browns’ brass, but he liked the Saints, Panthers and Falcons, too. And sure, the owners had impressed him, as had Stefanski’s plans and Berry’s work on putting the team together.
But more than anything else, when it came back to being a football decision for Watson, it was the roster that separated Cleveland. He not only saw the Browns as talented, he loved how young they were in key spots. The line, he figured, would be the best he’d ever played behind. The backs were as good as any in football, and there was depth at tight end, too. Amari Cooper was coming in. The defense had Myles Garrett and a loaded secondary. And so many of these guys stood to get better and stay in Cleveland for a long time to come.
So he told Mulugheta, who called Berry and told him to call Caserio to work out the trade. The agreement, which started roughly as three first-round picks and then some, morphed into this final deal on Friday afternoon.
Browns get: QB Deshaun Watson, 2024 fifth-round pick.
Texans get: 2022 first-round pick, ’23 first-round pick, ’23 third-round pick, ’24 first-round pick, ’24 fourth-round pick.
On one side of the deal, Caserio had what he’d been patient in waiting for—the sort of historic haul a 26-year-old franchise quarterback, who happened to be under contract for four more years, should bring. After Watson first requested the trade, before the lawsuits were filed, and at a time when Caserio was unwilling to move him, the Texans had been offered packages of three first-round picks and more. Those sorts of offers, without qualifiers, evaporated once the allegations against Watson surfaced.
And so Caserio was disciplined at the beginning of training camp, and at the trade deadline, in waiting for another market deal to come around, and the grand-jury decision finally brought him those sorts of offers again, off which he can juice his rebuild.
On the other side of the deal, the Browns still had some work to do. It’d become clear that Watson’s camp was looking for new money and new guarantees as part of a trade. And the Browns, upon learning they were Watson’s pick, pushed the trade over the goal line with an unprecedented, fully guaranteed five-year offer worth $230 million that offers him protection against a suspension in its structure (His 2022 base is just $1 million, and that’s where the money he’d lose during a suspension would be coming from).
So what does all this say about the NFL and Watson, given that the civil cases are still pending? That’s been discussed over the last few days and will continue to be discussed in the weeks and months to come. To be sure, there are a lot more serious matters at hand here than just football.
But over the last couple of weeks, for better or worse, football did come back into the picture. And the result? Watson has his new home, the Texans got their price and the Browns have their quarterback.
BUFFALO IS A HOT DESTINATION
I asked Bills GM Brandon Beane how different free agency is for him now, versus where he and Sean McDermott were four or five years ago. He laughed.
“Are you really asking that, Albert?” he asked, because he knew I was asking a question I already knew the answer to. “Yeah, I mean listen, I look at it as the city of Buffalo got chosen over the cities of Los Angeles and Dallas and some other places around the country. And that wasn’t happening prior to us getting Josh Allen here.”
It’s not new that there’s a quarterback in the AFC East luring accomplished veterans into the division to go ring-chasing.
That the quarterback in question is doing that for the Bills is new, though. And yes, the example that Beane was referencing, in a player picking Buffalo over Dallas and L.A., is a real one, and not a hypothetical.
Mark Ludwiczak/AP
Von Miller was who he was talking about, and Miller might be the best example there is of what’s happening. He got word to the Bills ahead of free agency—and not the other way around—that he’d be interested in coming to western New York. This was in large part because of what Allen brought to the table, which, for a defensive player, amounts to a chance for the Bills to compete for championships on an annual basis. And Miller wasn’t the only one.
“We can’t pay them all, but we definitely had players calling here, and we still do,” Beane said. “We just don’t have the cap space to handle them. But it’s one of those situations if we could even get close to their market, we’d probably get ’em because of Josh and what people have seen and what they’ve heard about him.”
There are obvious reasons, of course, why Rodger Saffold III and O.J. Howard would do it.
The Bills liked Saffold a couple of years back, and were runners-up to get him, before the Titans locked him down—and he’ll bring experience and toughness to the group, with veteran right tackle Daryl Williams moving on to make way for second-year pro Spencer Brown. And the hope is Howard is reborn in his second year back off a torn Achilles, and can be a vertical threat from a move tight-end spot, to complement young Dawson Knox at his position.
Being in the huddle with Allen should benefit each guy. For Saffold, it’s in how he can cover up a bad rep for a lineman. For Howard, it’s how Allen should be able to unlock his athleticism.
That said, what’s really remarkable is how it’s carried over to defense—Miller isn’t the only one who had the idea over the last few weeks that going to western New York to play with Allen was a good idea. Tim Settle, DaQuan Jones and Jordan Phillips were all right there with him, ready to fill the Bills’ need for interior guys who could pressure on third down.
But yes, Miller’s addition is the one that probably best exemplifies change in perspective in Buffalo, and the hope is that he can bring a little more than just what’s on the tape from L.A. and Denver. He can still play, of course, and fills the team’s biggest need. “You look at every year and you say, Where did you come up short like in the biggest games?” Beane said. “And we had the No. 1 defense, but we weren't always able to get the quarterback down.”
And that’s the first thing, with what he’ll mean to young edge-rushers Greg Rousseau, A.J. Epenesa and Boogie Basham, and even interior guys such as Ed Oliver running a close second, especially given the stories Beane heard (and we told back in February) on how Miller helped no less a star than Aaron Donald find his voice as a leader.
“No one in our locker room has had this career success that he’s had, so guys are gonna look to him and he’s not running from it,” Beane said. “And he’s gonna bring that, and more specifically to those ends that we have, I think they will all benefit from it. So that’s also part of it. You’re getting a really good player, but we hope that when his time’s done, these guys have become better pass rushers than they would have without playing with him.”
And it’s all possible now because of the hope Allen brings everyone.
The Bills’ run to the AFC title game 14 months ago opened a lot of people’s eyes to Allen, and the fireworks of this year’s divisional playoff, even if Buffalo lost the game, only worked to confirm what we’ve all been watching materialize over the last four years—as long as No. 17 is back there, the Bills have a chance.
So, really, management’s just taking advantage of that and, they hope, sending affirmation the players’ way as they do it.
“I think guys appreciate that this team is not settling,” Beane said. “It’s that we’re not saying, Hey, this team will just go back, that we’re looking and we’re trying to find pieces that will make us even stronger to go further.”
Miller is, for sure, one of those.
CHARGERS GET THEIR MULTIPLIER
If there’s one thing that Brandon Staley took away from his season with Khalil Mack, it was Mack’s first pass-rush rep in his first practice in Chicago.
It was September 2018, the Bears had just traded for Mack, and Staley was his position coach. Mack had been holding out all summer, with the Raiders holding the line in contract talks, so the concern was that he wouldn’t be in shape, and there might be a few weeks of transition as the star defender got his legs back. Which is when it happened.
“All eyes are on him, this is his first rep as a Bear, and when he got in that three-point stance on the left side and what that looked like, that get-off—that take-off,” Staley told me recently. “What that rep looked like to me just changed everything, because you knew that this is one of the rare players in the league. So that was a moment that I’ll remember, that first pass rush rep.”
And in a certain way, it informed Staley on what he’d look for this offseason, four years later—and not just in the fact that his Chargers happened to acquire Mack himself.
The last couple of weeks, to Staley and Charger GM Tom Telesco, have brought to life the second phase of a two-year plan they put in motion upon the head coach’s hire two Januarys ago. The 2021 offseason, they’d decided, was going to be about putting up infrastructure around Justin Herbert, and they accomplished that in signing Corey Linsley and Jared Cook, and drafting Rashawn Slater, Josh Palmer and Tre’ McKitty.
This offseason, from the start, was going the other way—bolstering Staley’s defense, and with the guys in-house having a year of technique and scheme work, that it was time to find more personnel to match what the system demanded. And first and foremost, that meant finding guys who could bring premium performance from premium positions, which wasn’t ever going to be easy.
Landing Mack just happened to represent the first chance Staley and Telesco had to do it, and the two took advantage of it, getting him, coming off an injury, for a 2022 second-rounder and a ’23 sixth-rounder. The second came with Patriots corner J.C. Jackson coming free, who was another player with background with the Chargers’ staff, with DC Renaldo Hill and secondary coach Derrick Ansley having recruited him out of high school, and receivers coach Chris Beatty having been together with him at Maryland.
Jackson, like Mack, had experience as a No. 1 at his position with his previous team, and his ball production and instincts on the New England tape were off the charts. So it’s not like he’s just coming to L.A. because of his connections. But that Staley knew Mack, and his assistants knew Jackson, certainly made the moves a little less of a gamble.
“It’s such a critical point, the background information, the character and then the scheme fit,” Staley said. “Because all these guys, there’s not a projection. And so I think that that was a huge component, because you want to know what you’re buying. That’s part of free agency, is you want to know what you’re getting. And that was a big part of it. I felt like that’s why we were so tactical in our approach.
“This group of guys that we’re looking at, it’s like, ’No, we really targeted these guys specifically.’”
It applied with the next phase down, too, with the signing of Sebastian Joseph-Day, who was with Staley when Staley was defensive coordinator for the crosstown Rams—the coach knows what he’s getting in Aaron Donald’s old workout partner. “He was our commander inside, like he’s kind of the quarterback of our D-line,” Staley said. And while he, and his staff don’t have the same sort of relationship, yet, with their other new interior defensive lineman, Austin Johnson, the research shows there are similar traits to Joseph-Day there.
Obviously, the Chargers saw needs, first and foremost, that these guys could fill. But beyond just filling those needs, all those intangibles add up to an overall mindset Staley wanted his defense to have—that his Rams defense had, and that he first saw with Mack brought to Chicago in making an already-really-good unit great.
And Staley has a story to illustrate that one, too. He can remember how that year, during practice, when the team would go from an offensive team period to a defensive team period, Mack would sprint from the sideline to where the ball was spotted. Pretty soon, Akiem Hicks was doing it, too. And Kyle Fuller. And Eddie Jackson. And eventually it turned into a race and carried over into games.
“When we got to the games, what our guys would say was, ‘Hey, take the field.’ Like that’s what he would say all the time when we would go out there and it’s just, ‘Hey, we’re coming fellas,’ and he really changed the entire culture on defense,” Staley said. “And just all those guys, if you look at that season—career year for Kyle Fuller, career year for Akiem Hicks, career year for Eddie Goldman. As a rookie, Roquan [Smith], Prince Amukamara played his best football for us. Eddie Jackson becomes a first-team All-Pro at safety.
“He was a multiplier.”
So the hope now is that all the stars the Chargers have assembled bring out the best in one another—from Mack to Jackson to Joey Bosa and Derwin James—and that trickles down. And that, the idea goes on, would have the defense making the strides the offense did a year ago.
From there, if it takes, well, then it’d be clear the sort of message building this way, and this aggressively, should send a locker room.
“Last year, with what we did in free agency and the draft, you're telling your locker room something—Hey, you're gonna support your quarterback,” Staley said. “This year, you’re specifically telling your locker room that you’re gonna build a complete team. And how do you do that? You back up what you say on a day-to-day basis with your actions, and I think it’s what happens here all the time. They know how I am and how we are as an organization.
“And I think these moves just tell them what they’re reminded of on a daily basis, which is we’re gonna compete every single day to the best of our ability, and that we’re gonna try and arm you guys with the personnel that can eventually lead to being a world champion.”
With Mack and Jackson aboard, they at least look a lot more like one than they might have just a few weeks ago.
TEN TAKEAWAYS
If Carson Wentz needed a wake-up call on his new NFL reality, he got it on Super Bowl Sunday. The then Colts quarterback saw Chris Mortensen’s report that morning, like everyone else did, that he was almost certainly done in Indianapolis. And it was news to him.
“I got a call from my agent on Super Bowl Sunday and found that out, and I was like ‘O.K., is there’s truth in that?’” Wentz told me Thursday. “So that was really the first time I’d heard it. Definitely caught me off guard, caught my agent and everybody, family, off-guard. I had no idea how it all transpired, it’s been a whirlwind.”
Less than a month later, Indianapolis dealt Wentz to the Commanders for a pair of third-round picks (next year’s can become a second-rounder, if he starts most of the year), which put Wentz on his third team in a little more than 12 months—so yeah, that qualifies as a whirlwind. And to be sure, it’s a much different place to be than where Wentz was less than three years ago, when the Eagles signed him to a four-year, $128 million extension.
Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
He’s still only halfway through that contract (his rookie deal had two years left on it, when he was extended in Philly), and the commitment Washington’s making to him isn’t near the one the Eagles did back in 2019. And that’s why coach Ron Rivera went out of his way to tell Wentz that he’s wanted in D.C. after Wentz got to town last week. Bottom line, after talking to Wentz, it’s clear to me he knows the score on here.
“For me, I try to not let it change who I am, necessarily, but at the same time, just, O.K., what could I have done better?” he said. “Whether it was something big or small that didn't work, or all of those things, you just take little nuggets of that, try and still be the same person, same player, and just try and always have that growth mindset. The same way I do with my marriage, my kids, my friendships, all of it, just continue to get a little bit better and learn from past experiences and I look forward to continuing to do that for the rest of my career.”
And those things? Wentz conceded taking lay-ups, something that Indy harped on with him, is a part of it. (“Be consistent, make the little plays, make the big plays,” he said, “and just deliver in the big moments.”) He also name-checked Terry McLaurin, Antonio Gibson, Logan Thomas, J.D. McKissic and Curtis Samuel as players he has “a lot of respect for” who’ll help him get there.
But after the last couple of years, he’s realistic to know what this’ll come down to, and it’s the first thing he said when I asked what he thinks he could’ve done better as a Colt.
“Win?” he answered, laughing. “Winning cures all, as you learn in this league real quick. There’s a lot of things that are in your control and a lot of things that are outside of your control. But honestly, it’s finding a way to win and finding a way to deliver in big moments and all of those things. At the end of the day, I think that’s what everyone cares about as a quarterback—Are you a winner? And so you have to find a way to deliver in those big moments and try and not make them bigger than they need to be and just go deliver.”
That brings us to one last twist on the story—and how a Washington football icon helped get Wentz the shot to do just that.
In February, Rivera had plans to go visit one of his mentors, John Madden. After Madden tragically died, Rivera wanted to use the time wisely and decided to go to Charlotte to spend time with Joe Gibbs. He had a laundry list of things he wanted to hit Gibbs on. One was his looming quarterback decision. Gibbs, who won a Super Bowl with three different quarterbacks, suggested he compile a short list to work off. So once Rivera got back to Washington, he did that, coming up with eight quarterbacks to study.
Long story short, the top two on the list wound up being unavailable, and Wentz’s ability to throw the ball vertically, see the middle of the field, and drive the ball outside the numbers distinguished him among the remaining six, as Rivera and Commanders execs Marty Hurney, Martin Mayhew and Eric Stokes studied the group. Then, Rivera saw comments from Darius Leonard, T.Y. Hilton and Jonathan Taylor on Wentz, and got a recommendation from ex-Eagles coach Doug Pederson, and the wheels were turning.
The last step came during combine week, when Washington got word he was, indeed, available, at which point Rivera had his video people call up Wentz’s tape in the Commanders’ suite at Lucas Oil Stadium, so the brass could get one more look.
The rest is history. And Wentz now, Wentz gets a chance to rewrite his own.
If you read between the lines with Mitch Trubisky, you can see why Pittsburgh wanted him, and why he wanted Pittsburgh. And really, maybe more than anything else, it came down to Trubisky honestly assessing himself as a player and taking from his experiences both in Chicago and Buffalo. Or at least that’s what I took from talking with him Friday, and especially when I asked what appealed to him about Steeler OC Matt Canada’s scheme.
Trubisky told me he studied tape on five teams his agents thought would contend for his services. He also researched what those teams wanted going forward. And it all kept coming back to Pittsburgh.
“[The Steelers] want to get to the play-action RPOs and really open up the offense and use a dual-threat quarterback, so when I heard that, that was very appealing to me,” he said. “I want to be in a situation where I’m able to use my legs and my arm, being able to run a little bit and keep the defense honest, and being able to open my teammates up as well, in the run game, whether it be zone-read or moving the pocket or sprint-outs or bootlegs, and all that stuff. That really opens up the playbook, and I just thought it’d be a great combination.”
Now, here’s what’s really interesting about it—the thought, as he explained it, really reflected on the experience he had last year as a backup in Buffalo, what he saw Brian Daboll and Josh Allen doing, and what maybe he thought was missing earlier in his career.
In a certain way, it was how one philosophical piece in how the quarterbacks were being coached wound up showing up in an important aspect of any quarterback’s game.
“It was just speeding up your on-field processing, but at the same time being able to play free and use your instincts … that balance,” he said. “I think the communication and the trust between the QB room and coach [Ken] Dorsey and coach Daboll, it really just allows you to play free and use all your strengths as a quarterback. And when they go to the game plan, when they call plays, they want to call them to your strengths and what you like.
“And you go through all that during the week. Even in-game communication, they want to run exactly what you feel comfortable with and plays you like. And so when you do that, you’re able to go out there, use your instincts, play free and it allows you to process a lot quicker on the field, so the ball’s going to the right place.”
And that, as Trubisky saw it, implicitly meant Allen could be himself all the time, and not just on the field, regardless of where he was drafted or how much money he was making.
“No matter what happened, Josh never got rattled, and I loved when we were dealing with adversity as a team, and it never shook him,” Trubisky continued. “He actually thrived in those situations, and it was awesome to see. And just the type of guy he is during the week, he’s a lot of fun to be around, he’s always himself. And he’s very secure in himself as well, and that just showed me just to be yourself every day.
“Your teammates want to see that side of you, they want to see you have fun. I feel like I was pretty serious in Chicago. But coming to Buffalo, I feel like we had a lot more fun but we also got a ton of work done.”
Which brings us back to Pittsburgh—and its appeal to Trubisky. On tape, sure, he saw the scheme fit, and the young rising talent, both on the line, and in bona fide weapons such as Chase Claypool, Diontae Johnson, Pat Freiermuth and Najee Harris.
All of that helps. But so does the belief he’ll be able to replicate what he saw between Allen and the Bills’ offensive staff. Because, as he looks at it, if Canada can get him playing a more instinctive game again, some of the on-field problems he had early in his career, when he was saddled with expectations and trying hard to play a certain way, should melt away.
“The conversations I‘ve had, and just talking through my agents and all the coaches so far, they’re going to play to the skill set of our offense, and the skill set of me,” he continued. “So I’m looking forward to going through the offense with them, and really just creating this to what we want it to be, and getting back to playing fun football and using my talents.”
At the very least, it should be an interesting case study, in a team trying to resurrect a first-round quarterback’s career. The history of such reclamation projects isn’t great. But there’s reason to be a little optimistic on this one.
One overarching theme on the Raiders’ moves—yes, they’re taking big swings, but there’s also a player profile that they’re adhering to. New coach Josh McDaniels and GM Dave Ziegler understand, of course, that the guys they pay, and they paid Chandler Jones and Davante Adams, are going to be examples to others in their locker room on what they’ll reward going forward, for better or worse. So it was important, with each acquisition, that beyond just being a good player, guys coming in were a certain type, too. And Jones and Adams, and new corner Rock Ya-Sin are all seen by the new Vegas brass as, for lack of a better term for it, dogs, relentless in practice and on the game field. Maxx Crosby, who the team just paid, fits that bill, too. Which is a big, and maybe overlooked, part of a big week for the new guys in town. Here’s a little more on how all of it went down …
• Institutional knowledge was important. Ziegler and McDaniels were together with Jones in New England. Derek Carr is close with Adams, having played with him at Fresno State, and Raider assistants Edgar Bennett and Maurice Drayton were with Adams in Green Bay. Which means there wasn’t a lot of guessing when it came to those two for the Raiders.
• Having those resources made it easy to move fast on Adams—Packers GM Brian Gutekunst made the first call to Zielger on Monday on a trade that was consummated Thursday. Also, having Bennett, in particular, helped to confirm the scheme fit that was on tape for the Raiders, based on his ability to run the entire route tree, attack a defense on all three levels and make things happen with the ball in his hands.
• The fit with Jones really goes back to an old Patriots tenet, even if Patrick Graham’s defense isn’t going to be a carbon copy of Bill Belichick’s. Outside linebackers, going back to the days of Willie McGinest Jr. and Mike Vrabel, have to be able to set the edge (to funnel plays inside) in the run game. Jones, at 6'5", 265 pounds with 35.5" arms, is bigger and longer than the guy he’ll replace, Yannick Ngakoue, with ability to disrupt on all three downs, rather than just third down. (Crosby and even Clelin Ferrell fit the need for longer edge players, too.)
• Ya-Sin, unsurprisingly, was a player the Patriots liked in the draft, when Ziegler and McDaniels were there, because he’s physical in the run game, has good speed and can match vertical routes. Plus, still young and in a contract year, he’s got upside and is a strong character fit (smart, strong football intangibles).
• And if you take Ya-Sin’s money ($1.57 million) for this year against Ngakoue’s ($13 million), in that player-for-player trade, Vegas wound up clearing nearly $11.5 million in cash, which meant, for an extra $6 million or so this year, they really swapped out Ngakoue for Ya-Sin and Jones.
Then, there’s this—it’s a pretty solid sign on where they stand with Carr. The plan is to start negotiating a long-term deal with the quarterback, with hopes it’ll get done between now and training camp. But for the time being, the moves of this week show the Raiders believe they’re close with Carr as their quarterback, while also showing McDaniels is operating in a very different fashion than he did in Denver, and he and Ziegler aren’t strictly adhering to what they learned in New England. So … game on in Vegas.
Initial contract numbers always need to be taken with a grain of salt. The headlines read that Von Miller signed a six-year, $120 million deal with the Bills, and Adams did a five-year, $141.25 million deal with the Raiders—meaning that Miller had a deal that was worth $20 million per running into the offseason he’d turn 39, and Adams had a deal at $28.25 million per that would expire after his 34th birthday. If you were reading both as such, then, sure, each was groundbreaking (Miller for a pass-rusher his age, Adams for any receiver, period). The truth? The contracts are plenty good but a tad less historic than they were made out to be, and both case studies on how the public should consume information during free agency, by highlighting two important tenets of any of these deals.
• More years generally is not a plus for the player. Even the best players usually are out of the guaranteed part of their contract by Year 3, and almost all of them are out of the guaranteed money in Year 4. That means the big deals should be read as two-to-three-year agreements, with team options on the end (which really only work to give a team control). As a practical matter, both Adams’s and Miller’s deals are guaranteed through three years.
• As such, the real value of these deals, especially for older players, should only go as far as the guarantees do. Miller’s getting $52.5 million over his first three years, Adams is getting $67.5 million over the same term. That makes Miller’s deal, at $17.5 million per, similar to the three-year deal Jones signed in Vegas; and Adams’ deal, at $22.5 million per, somewhat analogous to the final deal Julio Jones did with the Falcons.
And again, this isn’t to say the players in question here didn’t do good deals. They did. It’s just that the wow factor that accompanied the initial newsbreaks, and questions to follow on how this would hamstring the teams in question probably weren’t as justified as they seemed at the time. (Even if those tweets will fit nicely into an agent’s recruiting pitch to a college kid a few months from now.)
The David Ojabo injury at Michigan should raise some tough questions. Here’s what I can tell you—Ojabo and potential first pick Aidan Hutchinson, the pass-rushers who in tandem helped lead Michigan’s football revival in the fall, had a plan for all this, to try to avoid what happened to Ojabo on Friday in Ann Arbor. Both had it mapped out where they’d compete at the combine, and use the pro day as a sort of replacement for the private workouts that usually dot a prospect’s calendar in March and April, so as not to take any unnecessary physical risk.
Unfortunately, even taking that level of care wasn’t enough in Ojabo’s case. In a pass-drop drill at the pro day, Ojabo, who’d been considered a first-round lock, caught the ball coming off a back-pedal, planted, pushed off and crumpled to the ground. The nature of the incident made it obvious to those in attendance where this was going, and tests in the afternoon confirmed that he’d torn his Achilles tendon.
The good news is that this particular injury isn’t the football death sentence it once was. Ojabo should be able to get back to where he was. Still, it stands to cost him a lot of money.
And the fallout? Well, Hutchinson, for one, took notice. He’d planned to work out privately for only one team, and that was the Jaguars, who have the first pick. That workout’s been canceled—and Hutchinson’s agent, Mike McCartney, told me the Jaguars GM Trent Baalke was completely understanding. He hopes others will be, too.
“Aidan played 14 games, did everything at the combine and all the position drills at his pro day,” said McCartney, who was once an NFL scout himself. “I feel like that’s plenty for teams to figure out who he is as a player.”
On top of that, McCartney said he’s limiting travel for Hutchinson and another client, NC State OT Ikem Ekwonu, leading up to the combine. Both will take trips to visit the Jaguars, Texans and the two New York teams (the Jets and Giants were accommodating in setting up dates for those guys in tandem), and see the teams they’re local to (Lions for Hutchinson, Panthers for Ekwonu), and that’s it.
Why? Well, McCartney’s argument is the NFL has gone way too far in wearing prospects out before the draft, which puts them in a position where, as rookies, they’re prone to being physically unprepared when they show up, and physically worn down as their first seasons wear on. But here’s the thing—both those guys are expected to be top-five picks. It’s way tougher for a second- or third-rounder, let alone a probable college free agent, to make that kind of decision.
So just as the makeup of the combine itself has been analyzed, maybe it’s time to look at the overall setup of the predraft process. It won’t heal Ojabo’s Achilles. But maybe it will prevent these sorts of events in the future.
The Rams receiver swap-out of last week is logical. But that didn’t make it any less-painful on Sean McVay & Co. to let Robert Woods go Saturday. Woods was one of the first acquisitions of the McVay era, coming in with Andrew Whitworth, and making a similar impact on who the Rams would wind up being under their new coach. And that’s why they worked with him on the trade, to try to help find him the right destination, with Tennessee being an outstanding football (Woods is a real good deep-threat off play-action, and a strong run blocker) and intangible (a tough guy going to a tough-guy place) fit.
So why did it wind up happening this way? A few reasons for that …
1. If the Rams simply ran it back with their 2021 receiver room, they’d have two of their top three (Woods, Odell Beckham Jr.) coming back off torn ACLs. It’s tough to manage one of those into the plans. Two would’ve been awfully complicated.
2. To take care of that, the Rams made a calculated run at Allen Robinson, whose market didn’t materialize as he might’ve hoped—his 2021 tape wound up costing him—which kept his price tag reasonable (3 years, $46.5 million).
3. Robinson’s entry meant, if Beckham is to stay, you’d have four starting contracts in your receiver room. That, obviously, would be tough, even if the cap is as fungible as the Rams have made it seem. Woods was due $13.5 million in cash this year.
4. Further complicating the cash-flow picture was the extension going to Matthew Stafford, and possible contract adjustments for Super Bowl heroes Aaron Donald and Cooper Kupp.
5. All of the above also made it harder to move Woods—a really good player, but one who’s expensive, turning 30, and coming off the torn ACL. Bottom line, the Rams probably weren’t getting much to begin with, and especially so when they decided to let him help pick his next team (a sacrifice they made to do right by Woods).
So in the end, the Titans will get (once Woods gets healthy) a really good complement to A.J. Brown at a very reasonable price. And the Rams make themselves a little more ready to go for 2022 specifically, with the roster remaining very much in a win-now place, and having a championship to defend.
The decision reversals of the last week are actually the benefit of the two-day negotiating window, as I see it. Everyone made the comparisons of what J.D. McKissic, Randy Gregory and Za’Darius Smith did over the last few days to the famous free-agent changes-of-heart by Frank Gore and Anthony Barr years ago. The parallels, to be clear, really aren’t perfect in each case. But there’s a theme among them that I think is important—all of them show how rushed these decisions almost always are. Pro football’s the only sport where the bulk of notable free-agent names come off the market in a matter of days. Some (Trubisky’s one example) have agreements in place minutes after the negotiating window opens. And when you really think about it, the idea that you’d make such a huge financial, and life, decision that quickly is kind of wild. Illegal tamper, as opposed to the legal kind conducted in that window, does help ease some of this. But I always felt like it should eventually come to this, sort of like it has with the NBA’s weeklong window, where at least the more prominent players can use the time to weigh their options and make a coherent decision. Now, I’m not arguing that players should give a team their word before they’re ready to, like McKissic did with the Bills or Smith did with the Ravens. But I do think slowing the process just a little is a good thing. And if that’s what these situations do for other players, I don’t think it’s a bad thing.
The Bengals deserve credit for doing the obvious thing. And to me, it goes beyond just that—there was very much a plan they were following in landing the linemen they did to play in front of their burgeoning superstar of a quarterback. But in going and getting Patriots C Ted Karras III and Bucs G Alex Cappa, and then pursuing and landing the right tackle that Dallas cut, La’el Collins, over the weekend, they followed through on an internal promise to prioritize smarts, toughness, consistency and, yes, pass protection in the linemen they pursued (their list also included, for what it’s worth, Ryan Jensen, Laken Tomlinson and Austin Corbett). The idea was to get guys who could work with Joe Burrow mentally (no mistake that the two guys they signed played with Tom Brady) and give him room to step up and maneuver in the pocket. Adding Collins was huge in that regard, and Burrow personally made sure that happened (he invited Collins to join Cappa, Karras and new tight end Hayden Hurst and their significant others for dinner at his house Friday night) over the weekend. And they may not be done yet, with a pretty good shot, they’ll look for depth in the draft, too. But, to me, the last week represents a pretty good start in positioning themselves to be the sort of contender they were last year.
The Watson trade should open up the next phase of the quarterback trade market—which will be the final phase involving starters. The Niners, for one, were waiting for the Texans to move Watson, because teams involved in those talks (Carolina, New Orleans) have been expected to have some level of interest in Jimmy Garoppolo, and might make it easier for San Francisco to get its desired price (thought by other teams to be two second-round picks). Obviously, now Baker Mayfield enters the discussion (one team told me Friday that Cleveland wanted a first-round pick, but that was before the Browns had traded for Watson). And it’ll be interesting to see what happens with Matt Ryan over the next 48 hours, since he has a $7.5 million roster bonus, set to be paid on April 15, that’ll be earned Tuesday. Then, there’s Kyler Murray’s unresolved situation, and the likelihood that Arizona will get calls on him, and you can see where this certainly isn’t over yet, and teams like the Colts, Panthers and Saints figure to be sniffing around in the next few days.
I’ve got some quicker-hitting takeaways from the first phase of free agency. Those takeaways are … right here.
• I’m intrigued with the Jets’ potential for 2022—and most of all I really like how GM Joe Douglas has put everything into rebuilding the offensive line. In Mekhi Becton, Alijah Vera-Tucker and Tomlinson, he has very real foundation pieces. And that sort of investment really is an investment in Zach Wilson.
• Conversely, the Patriots' relative silence in free agency only underscores how important it’s going to be that Belichick puts together another solid draft class, to counteract the failures in that area over the latter stages of New England’s championship years.
• The Cordarrelle Patterson story is a good one for players to learn from. There’s a humility, as I see it, in being willing to reinvent yourself as he has, and a toughness it takes to get through the failed experiments of his past. He earned the two-year, $10.5 million deal he got in Atlanta this week. Good for him. He deserves it.
• I’m interested to see where Gutekunst goes now to replace Adams’s production. Getting Robert Tonyan Jr. back at tight end is a good step, and finding a way to keep Marques Valdez-Scantling would be another. But you have to think the Packers have a move left in them to give Rodgers another weapon. Maybe it’ll be with one of their first-round picks.
• We mentioned this in Friday’s GamePlan, and it’s worth reiterating—Mayfield’s situation is such a great example of how players never live down what place they were drafted. Were he to have gone in the second or third round, we’d probably look at him a lot differently.
• Lamar Jackson’s taken criticism for being patient on his contract, but it sure looks like it’s going to pay off. When he first became eligible for an extension, just one quarterback had a contract with a base value averaging $40 million per year. There are now six such quarterback contracts. So no one can argue any longer that such a deal is an outlier.
• That the Eagles and Fletcher Cox were able to get back together after Cox was cut, and do a new one-year deal, reflects well on everyone involved. Philly for keeping the door open for a local icon, and Cox for not taking the business of the game personally.
• The Jaguars’ spending (Christian Kirk, Brandon Scherff, Foye Oluokun, Foley Fatukasi, Zay Jones, Darious Williams, Evan Engram) was certainly eye-opening. But … they were always going to have to pay a tax to get guys to go there. And where else were they going to spend that money in the next two or so years? I don’t know who on their roster you’d be spending to keep. So I get the idea. Will it work? Eh …
• Smart move by JuJu Smith-Schuster to go to Kansas City. He’s 25 and may still have a monster contract coming his way down the line. And there’s no better place to position yourself as receiver to show what you can do than alongside Patrick Mahomes.
• Good thing Tom Brady decided to come back when he did. If he doesn’t make that call, it’s possible Jensen and Carlton Davis are signed elsewhere right now, with others lining up to follow them out the door. And Brady would then be looking at walking back into a demonstrably worse football situation. Which, of course, explains his timing here.
SIX FROM THE SIDELINE
1. Congrats to LeBron James for passing Karl Malone to move into second place on the NBA’s all-time scoring list. That he’s still going like this at 37 years old, even if there have been fits and starts this year, is pretty remarkable. And my (shoddy) math tells me he’s got a good shot to pass Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for No. 1 by the end of next season.
2. Stories like Saint Peter’s are the best. Just 2,600 students there, and the Peacocks (points for the nickname) somehow took down Kentucky, stocked with future pros.
3. I don’t have football expectations for Ohio State basketball, and I really like Chris Holtmann as a coach. But nine years without a trip to the Sweet 16 is too many.
4. I mentioned The Dropout in this space last week, and I’m all caught up now. And my God, does Elizabeth Holmes come off looking like crap (which, from all you hear, is absolutely deserved).
5. Took my kids to Boston College’s spring practice over the weekend, and I can tell you Jeff Hafley had the place buzzing, even on an ugly, rainy New England morning. It sure looks like the ex–Kyle Shanahan assistant has that place pretty close to breaking through.
6. RIP, Razor Ramon. Definitely one of the most memorable characters of the WWF, (before it became WWE) of my childhood, and another pro wrestler gone too soon.
BEST OF THE NFL INTERNET
I wholeheartedly agree with the retiring Andrew Whitworth—most people I know who are really outstanding at what they do have a couple of screws loose.
Goodbye, Broncos fans!!!
This, from my old NFL Network colleagues, jumped out at me: In April 2018, less than four years ago, hope in the AFC went by the names of Baker Mayfield and Sam Darnold. And Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson were drafted after those guys.
The Legend of Josh Allen’s strong among NFL players.
This is fantastic. Well done, Dabo Swinney. Well done, Clemson.
My thoughts on The Professor are forthcoming.
Going into the combine, it felt like the Jaguars would take a tackle first overall. Since, the wind’s been blowing in a different direction.
Don’t laugh when I tell you the Seahawks brass really does like Drew Lock!
That’s a very honest and straightforward directive from the Patriots to a free agent of theirs. And I also think it’s going to mean added creativity in using Jonnu Smith in 2022, and maybe more productivity from Smith, too.
Anyone who’s been to NFL training camps regularly has seen a situation like this: player goes down, coaches move the drill, and trainers attend to the injured guy while everyone else moves forward. But man, this one really looks bad. And I don’t think the individual scouts had bad intentions, it looks to me like they're trying to make way for the medical people. It’s just that he’s lying there, and no one seems to be showing much concern at all. You’d think someone, in that situation, would be rushing to his side.
Like I was saying …
I can’t remember what Kevin was responding to here. Could’ve been a lot of things.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
I can still vaguely remember the first time I actually met John Clayton.
It was at a Patriots training camp practice, and I was 25 or 26 years old, and working at the MetroWest Daily News, still very new to covering the league. None of the national guys who’d come into town to cover Belichick’s juggernaut knew who I was, nor did they have reason to. And yet, as I stood there watching practice, a guy I’d watched on TV since high school came over with an ear-to-ear smile on his face and stuck his hand out.
John Clayton, he said.
Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports
And for me, this was a little bit like those stories you’d hear from New England players on how Tom Brady would introduce himself when they’d first met him, in that the response in my head to Clayton was the same—Yeah, no s---. I know who you are. But in the years since, I’ve learned that’s just who Clayton was. Humble. Friendly to a fault. Relentlessly nice until the end.
Clayton was an information junkie before it was popular to be one. He was affable in a business loaded with the jaded and the cynical. And nothing ever was forced with him.
That day 15 or so years ago, I can remember how quickly he pivoted to talking football, wanting to know what I knew about the team I was covering. It foreshadowed a lot of conversations I would end up having with him. If he came off, at times, like a little bit of a fan, that’s because he was one. He loved what he was doing for a living and, unlike a lot of us, never lost sight of how lucky he was that he got to do it on a day-to-day business.
It was pretty awesome how often you’d see that come out, too. Everyone had stories from training camps of John telling them he was on his 14th camp in 10 days, before explaining how he’d assembled his summer itinerary like a jigsaw puzzle around morning and night practices. And you’d see him at the Super Bowl, with his wife Pat (who he so loyally cared for as she dealt with MS) at his side, still fresh and ready to roll as he had been in Week 1.
So if anyone in our business wants to honor John, here is, I think, the best way any of us can—go make the most of your next few days at work, and attack the job like he did, like someone who couldn’t believe someone else was paying him to do it, and wouldn’t ever dare carry an inch of pretense in his approach, lest he put any of it in jeopardy.
Do that, and you might have a shot to get as much out of life as John did in his 67 years.
RIP, my friend. I know you won’t forget to introduce yourself when you get up there. Even though you never really needed any introduction.
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